An alien dessert at the buffet.
Tangerine Hotels wrote a response to our
Halcyon Hotel Days (published in Echelon magazine). They seem to be attacking our writer (Savan) personally while confirming their high prices and poor service, but judge for yourself.
Here's the
original article. Their concerns seem to be 1) that we didn't visit the hotel 2) that the writer had a deceitful and alcoholic childhood and 3) that he's racist. We'd counter that 1) we did 2) what? and 3) mentioning different nationalities isn't racist. Anyways, enjoy the letters back and forth:
Letter From Tangerine Beach Hotels PLC
Our attention has been drawn to the
above mentioned article in your publication. We thank you for featuring our hotel, a 170-room beach property with a loyal customer base built over 30 years and comparing it with a much smaller and brand-new elsewhere along the north-western coast of Sri Lanka. However, while we do not challenge the writer's opinion of his experience at our hotel, we wish to point out a factual error and other issues and hope you will publish a clarification.
1) Your writer has set out to critique the Tangerine, mainly over the buffet lunch. However, we are constrained to question the bona fides of the writer who claimst that our buffet is "expensive at 2,600 nett." Our buffet is priced at Rs. 2,750 nett. It is possible that your writer had a buffet in Kalutara at Rs. 2,600, but certainly not at our hotel. We expect a food/travel writer to get the basics right or else we have to question his or her credibility.
2) Even if the writer had in fact gone to the Tangerine and made a genuine mistake on the price of the buffet, we regret that we were unable to re-create the writer's expectations of being able to use a day-room to stash "booze bought at supermarket prices and smuggled into the hotel." The introduction to said article suggests that the writer was hoping to relive a childhood memory of deceit and dishonesty by undermining the revenue of the hotel. We are sorry we were unable to allow that.
3) We are very disturbed by the racist innuendo of your writer in referring to some of our Central Asian guests. We totally reject racial discrimination and do no welcome guests who insult others. We are proud that our hotel can be a hell for racial bigots even when they are disguised as travel writers.
We would appreciate the publication of this letter in your next issue in the interest of fairness and balanced journalism.
Yours faithfully,
Manjula Rajapakshe
Food And Beverage Executive
Our Response
To the Management, Tangerine Hotels
We are very disappointed by your response to our piece on the Tangerine Beach Hotel at Kalutara. Rather than make an effort to either apologize or defend the standard of food and service offered by your hotel you attack a piece of honest and independent writing.
Firstly you point on that your buffet costs Rs 2750 rather Rs 2600 we believe our piece was accurate but will take your word for it. Still, you’re effectively pointing out that your buffet is even worse value than we’ve made it out to be. What was awful at Rs 2600 only gets worse at 2750. Thank you though for your honesty.
Your second point regarding our descriptions of visits during our childhoods in the early 90’s is incoherent. These were the routines of our parents and grandparents and this was simply a piece of nostalgic description. On this visit we made no attempt to book day rooms or consume any booze of any kind. We ordered two cokes at the bar and your staff effectively failed to serve us.
As for what you call racial innuendo actually our point was to do with geography - Kazakhstan is perhaps the most landlocked county in the world – it’s thousands of miles from the sea and in winter temperatures fall well below freezing. So our point was that Kazakh visitors are likely to be less discerning about beaches and resorts than locals. Still, to an extent, we accept your argument. No one, not Kazakhs, Germans, Sri Lankans or anyone else should have to endure the poor service levels we did on our visit to Tangerine.
Ultimately we paid the full price for our day at the hotel, arrived with only fond memories of the place, left disappointed and tried to convey the extent of this disappointment in writing. We drew attention to the poor food, the sullen service, the quality of towels ,the faded fittings- you haven’t defended any of these so appear to have accepted that this is indeed the case. This is really a shame because we’ve been visiting the Tangerine for decades (as we point out) and believe it has lot of potential. We suggest you take the Jetwing Lagoon as an example- while you claim it’s a small boutique it too was originally a 70s era resort and at end of the day use of the pool + buffet there is cheaper there than at the Tangerine. So from the perspective of a day trip for Colombo residents (which was the purpose of the review) we found absolutely no reason to visit Tangerine over the Jetwing Lagoon – even your letter seems to concede this point.
What Now?
Anyways,
read the original article for what the fuss was all about. I'd note that the management's response doesn't really address the point that their hotel is overpriced and impersonal. We don't really recommend the Tangerine.
Delete Comment
tharanga
Tangerine sounds awful. Will make sure NOT to go there
sonali
I like your response YAMU!!!
Arquib
Haha! Replying to a professional critique is the worst think you could ever do. You have to ACCEPT it, and work towards ELIMINATING the problems. Will not visit now.
DavidBlacker
lol, brilliant
Ravini
Btw back in 2011 Hotel Tangerine wans't that bad. The food wasn't good back then either. I've tasted waaay better stuff in normal cafes and restaurants and for desserts we only had different varieties of mousse which I HATED. Everything else was average as far as I can rem but not the best.
Hope they have enough brains to look at all the critique and make a point on improving their service + quality of FOOD this time.
AnotherIndi
Sri Lankan Hospitality trade (Hotels, Restaurants, Clubs, Pubs - any thing which offers a product that must come with a service with a smile) has a long way to go! Thank YAMU for taking the initiative to improve the Hospitality trade.
Most big shot places similar to Tangerine dont live up to the standards due to boo boo management teams with a stuck up mindset thinking there shit is better. Its time Sri Lankans Hospitality trade employers and employees learn to start giving a quality product with a smile to Sri Lankans first!
smeckko
Tangerine is one of cheap a** hotel groups in Sri Lanka who charges guests star hotel prices without the stars. Most likely they dont meet some of criteria's to get the stars or just plain stingy its a pity for the future of tourism industry in Sri Lanka
T
just goes to show how ill-equipped Sri Lankan establishments are in the age of social media. The response from the hotel is a PR catastrophe.
hevar
does anyone else see the irony in that the managers name is effectively a "rajapaksa", lol!.
Ridiculous letter by Tangerine- I feel like there is a good chance i would avoid it now!
dopamine
Tangerine's response is ridiculous, while also being, sadly, typical. Their F&B Executive sounds like an idiot! Will not be going there anytime soon.
SriLankanTraveller
Sounds like yet another one of those hotels that treat foreigners as if they were kings, and locals as if there are worthless.
Ashok
Poor form by Tangerine
RaphaelKlusner
If the response is this harsh, I can imagine how the place would be. This reply is suicide for them. As far as I am concerned, another hotel added to the black list.
Frodolk
it would have been better for Tangerine to 1) not respond 2)improve their service quietly 3) respond with a thank you for the review, they will do everything in their power to improve their service and ask YAMU to come back anytime, on them and review them again.
FAIL.
shanidealwisgmailcom
Hello Yamu. Please share with us the secret of how you guys paid a lower price for the buffet. Surely the hotel can't be right. Why don't you publish the hotel receipt to prove them that you actually went there. Thank you for the review.
rohanperera1973gmailcom
Hi guys. Can you please arrange a boycott of this hotel. We tried to get a room for the long poya weekend (Feb 23 - 25). The darn place is full.
rohanperera1973gmailcom
Anyone who has cancelled a booking, please alert me on my mail rohanperera1973@gmail.com We have been waiting to go back to Tangerine after we had our wedding there. I hope the management sees this and do me the favour of giving me priority and ensure we have a nice nostalgic 10th wedding anniversary. Sorry to hear about your experience, but our experience there had been quite pleasant. In fact, one of the few places which welcomes the locals.
shimi720yahoocom
Hi folks. Sorry, I did not know about your website till a friend just sent me this link. We were very amused because we had an office outing at the Tangerine and our experience was quite different. We thought the sea was too rough for bathing, but hotel staff were friendly… Their Sri Lankan food display was understated, but it reminded me of my mama's cooking. It is not cheap. Will I go again? Yes, but it will have to be with a big family group or a lot of friends…
sunil_mendishotmailcom
How can you take a review seriously if you get the basic facts wrong. I noticed the Daily Mirror always publishes the prices (the right ones!) so we know what kind of bill to expect. I know most of the reviews are done as public relations puffs. Those who give good freebies get rave reviews. Others are trashed. Such is life. Having said that, I hope Tangerine will reduce the price of their buffet. I don't want to pay 3,000 rupees for a buffet when we have seven million people in this country who earn less than two dollars a day.
rohanperera74gmailcom
I totally agree with T who says: ”just goes to show how ill-equipped Sri Lankan establishments are in the age of social media.” Thanks mate, you said a mouthful. Tangerine is clearly incompetent in their social media / web presence. If they had any sense, they would never have responded to the review by yamu.lk To respond to a website which hardly has any reach is not only a waste of time, but actually helps the website to get more hits and improve their rankings. Something that yamu.lk appears desperate to do, judging by their axela rankings. For those who are not new familiar with the new media jargon, Axela.com gives you details of websites and tells you the kind of impact they have. Check it out for yourself. This is what Axela.com statistics show and say of yamu. Lk “
Yamu.lk is ranked #249,140…according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Battaramulla (where it is ranked #197). Approximately 87% of Yamu.lk's visitors are in Sri Lanka, where it has attained a traffic rank of 440. Visitors to the site spend roughly 64 seconds on each pageview…”
So clearly as T pointed out, Tangerine are fools to have even responded. If you need help with social media consultancy, please contact me at rohanperer74@gmail.com
maratnasiri1991gmailcom
Hmmm. Seven readers posted comments Feb 14 on a story dated Feb 15th. Yamu must be using a time machine to go back in time too! LOL. Don't make in-house comments so obvious.
chamarap
it says last updated not posted.
rohanperera74gmailcom
I totally agree with T who says: ”just goes to show how ill-equipped Sri Lankan establishments are in the age of social media.” Thanks mate, you said a mouthful. Tangerine is clearly incompetent in their social media / web presence. If they had any sense, they would never have responded to the review by yamu.lk To respond to a website which hardly has any reach is not only a waste of time, but actually helps the website to get more hits and improve their rankings. Something thatyamu.lk appears desperate to do, judging by their Alexa rankings. For those who are not new familiar with the new media jargon, Axela.com gives you details of websites and tells you the kind of impact they have. Check it out for yourself. This is what Axela.com statistics show and say of yamu. Lk “
Yamu.lk is ranked #249,140…according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Battaramulla (where it is ranked #197). Approximately 87% of Yamu.lk's visitors are in Sri Lanka, where it has attained a traffic rank of 440. Visitors to the site spend roughly 64 seconds on each pageview…” (Ref: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yamu.lk# )
So clearly as T pointed out, Tangerine are fools to have even responded. If you need help with social media consultancy, please contact me at rohanperera74@gmail.com
rohanperera74gmailcom
I totally agree with T who says: ”just goes to show how ill-equipped Sri Lankan establishments are in the age of social media.” Thanks mate, you said a mouthful. Tangerine is clearly incompetent in their social media / web presence. If they had any sense, they would never have responded to the review by yamu.lk To respond to a website which hardly has any reach is not only a waste of time, but actually helps the website to get more hits and improve their rankings. Something thatyamu.lk appears desperate to do, judging by their Alexa rankings. For those who are not new familiar with the new media jargon, Alexa.com gives you details of websites and tells you the kind of impact they have. Check it out for yourself. This is what Alexa.com statistics show and say of yamu. Lk “
Yamu.lk is ranked #249,140…according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Battaramulla (where it is ranked #197). Approximately 87% of Yamu.lk's visitors are in Sri Lanka, where it has attained a traffic rank of 440. Visitors to the site spend roughly 64 seconds on each pageview…” (Ref: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yamu.lk# )
So clearly as T pointed out, Tangerine are fools to have even responded. If you need help with social media consultancy, please contact me at rohanperera74@gmail.com
Admin pl. remove my excess postings. sorry, there was no option to edit my own posts so had to re-post to drop corrections/ spelling. my apologies.
JaneSaxby
Damn, YAMU seems very abusive and rude. Makes no sense to write an article of this nature and blame a hotel chain. It would have been more diplomatic to have written to the hotel top management if you guys had a serious personal problem with the hotel. I havent been to Tangerine recently so cant comment on quality of food. But still the article and especially this blog seems quite abusive.
rohanperera1973gmailcom
I return to this page hoping you managed to persuade some people to stay away from the Tangerine. They still can't give me a room for the Feb 23 - 25 long weekend. Darned… If the hotel management is reading this mail, please help me with the reservation. email rohanperera1973@gmail.com Reservation submitted through Red Apple.
rohanperera1973gmailcom
Jane Saxby. Sorry, I totally disagree with you. Yamu, or for that matter any one else rfor that matter, has a perfect right to express their opinions. They need not write to the hotel if they find something wrong. Journalistically, they are quite right in what they attempted. They expressed an opinion and you can agree or not with that. But what they got wrong was their facts. Surely if they can't get the cost of the lunch right, then it raises some serious doubts about their professionalism. I think those in glass houses must be careful when they undress!!! I am begining to wonder if the hotel and yamu collaborated in some sort of an elaborate scam to a) generate more hits for the site and b) generate more interest in the hotel. After seeing all these comments, I really want to go there and check out for myself. Not a bad business strategy Tangerine.
JaneSaxby
Rohan, what you say makes no sense at all, You want a Room there but you talk shit about their services and food and seem to agree with a abusive and rude article written in a very unprofessional and unethical manner. In the business world there is something called privacy, unfortunately its not that strict here in Sri Lanka. But if this was done in another country which valued people privacy especially on a business confidential note written to YAMU in person. They sure would have got sued for ill doing. So think more ethnically and professionally.
Journalists are generally expected to write the truth than stating ill comments about a business and her clients.
shru YAMU STAFF
Jane, just to clarify that the letter written to YAMU by Tangerine was not a confidential one - they specifically requested that it be published.
rohanperera1973gmailcom
Hi Jane Saxby. I am sorry you misunderstood me. You say: "You want a Room there but you talk s*** (I edit bad language) about their services and food and seem to agree with a abusive and rude article written in a very unprofessional and unethical manner." I neither agreed nor disagreed with their review. But, I certainly agree with you that they are very unprofessional to get a basic fact wrong, and yet go on banging about how "right" they are. Once the hotel says that the buffet is much more than what the reviewer paid for it, then the entire review becomes suspect! That is a basic fact that YAMU cannot wish away. My point is that I am still waiting for a reservation for this weekend at the Tangerine, and I still don't have a room. I can get a room at the adjoining Royal Palms, but it lacks the character of the Tangerine and looks like a concrete jungle.
JaneSaxby
Thanks for the clarification shru (Yamu Staff).
Rohan Perera, Good you agree about unprofessional approach of YAMU and its writers and for sure the comments are ill. But I at least appreciate the fact they not trying to delete opinions of its readers posts.
Rohan, SL has a lot of hotels, and if you think Tangerine is bad trying to be a real low and making attempts to stop others from going there (as you itself have posted above). BUT you still want to go there and now you say Tangerine has a good character, LOL… Man if you dont like a hotel then dont go there. Just stay back at home or go some other place…
Suda
How is getting the price wrong a big deal?…anyways, kudos Yohan for your persistence in trying to get a room!! Haha…funny chap you are!
rohanperera1973gmailcom
Dear Suda, If you get a basic fact wrong while criticizing others (especially in something like a food review), then you undermine your entire credibility. Some call it shooting in the foot. Obviously Yamu is not a professional site and is probably put together by a bunch of well-meaning young people to have a good laugh. So as you suggest Suda, getting a basic fact wrong may not be a big deal for Yamu. Yamu yamu. ohoma yamu.